From
the BBC» France rail crash: Dozens hurt as train hits tree in hailstorm
17 August 2016
Dozens of people were hurt, eight of them seriously, when a regional train hit a tree uprooted during a hailstorm in the south of France.
Witnesses said one passenger had been thrown out of the train by the force of the crash, at Saint-Aunes in the Herault region.
Emergency services said one person was critically injured and airlifted to hospital.
The front of the train was badly damaged and windows were knocked out.
The double-decker train had been travelling at 140km/h to the east of Montpellier when it rammed into the tree at around 15:45 local time (13:45 GMT), reports said.
"We were on the train when hailstones the size of ping-pong balls started falling, then we heard what sounded like an explosion," said a 24-year-old passenger from Luxembourg who gave her name as Justine.
"The train shook for a few seconds and then I saw some people whose heads were covered in blood."
Some passengers initially thought the crash was the beginning of a terrorist attack, after the string of incidents across Europe in recent months.
I was hoping to find the same pictures I've seen on TV, showing what this tree did to the train, as these ones are not as clear:
If you look closely at the frontal view you can see that big lump of tree inside the cab comes out halfway up on the side. (the interior view is even scarier). The driver threw himself on the floor and escaped serious injury, but he was very shocked by it. And
SNCF▸ say the train was not running at its full speed of 140 km/hr due to the weather.
The passenger who was thrown out of the hole in the side of the train is now off the danger list. Having established that, French TV reporting has concentrated on whose tree did it. It was a private tree, standing in a garden next to the line. Thus SNCF are keen to point out it was not their fault. I get the impression that the owner may be strictly liable - i.e. not knowing it was weak is no defence.
The tree was not uprooted - it snapped several metres up (and it was described as a pine 3 m in diameter at the base). That may explain the early reports that it had not snapped the overhead wires, if it was held up at its trunk end. Alternatively, the fact that the violent hailstorm was still going on may mean the tree fell almost exactly as the train arrived.
Definitely the wrong kind of tree on the line.
